New MacPro not booting from external firewire

Hey guys, quick question.
I have just gotten the new 2009 MacPro and when I try to boot from an external drive it just freezes. I know the image is good because it boots up no problem on my iMac. It wont boot either through firewire or USB.
Any ideas and/or help is greatly appreciated.

Apple is kinda weird about software versions. Leopard on the Mac Pro install disc likely has some special stuff to take advantage of hyperthreading and different things that older Macs didn't have. If I'm not mistaken, Nehalem can't even boot off a drive from an older Mac Pro.
I believe the minimum OS that a Nehalem Mac Pro can run is 10.5.6. After poking around a bit with the install discs, I was interested to learn that Nehalem's version of iLife also includes special drivers to take special advantage of Hyper-Threading as well as some other elements of Nehalem's architecture.
Undoubtedly, Snow Leopard will include support for all the Intel systems, but until then, the included install/restore discs are your only way of installing a Nehalem-compatible boot drive. If you lose them, you'll have to go to talk to an Apple "Genius" to get things sorted.

Similar Messages

Why is my GUID partitioned HD not booting from external firewire

Hello everyone,
I have a new 2TB WD EARS drive which I have Snow Leopard installed on. It was cloned from my 1TB WD drive which was running Snow Leopard perfectly beforehand. I have the 2TB HDD installed in a firewire400/800/USB/eSata enclosure and I cannot boot up from the HDD. It is GUID Partitioned as you can see from the Info below:
    Name :     WDC WD20 EARS-19MVWB0 Media
    Type :     Disk
    Partition Map Scheme :     GUID Partition Table
    Disk Identifier :     disk1
    Media Name :     WDC WD20 EARS-19MVWB0 Media
    Media Type :     Generic
    Connection Bus :     USB
    USB Serial Number :     000001D919A8
    Writable :     Yes
    Ejectable :     Yes
    Mac OS 9 Drivers Installed :     No
    Location :     External
    Total Capacity :     1.8 TB (2,000,398,934,016 Bytes)
    S.M.A.R.T. Status :     Not Supported
    Disk Number :     1
    Partition Number :     0
Name :     CREAZNMIND
    Type :     Volume
    Disk Identifier :     disk1s2
    Mount Point :     /Volumes/CREAZNMIND
    File System :     Mac OS Extended
    Connection Bus :     USB
    Writable :     Yes
    Universal Unique Identifier :     22415261-328A-3D43-80BC-241D1051E78C
    Capacity :     1.8 TB (2,000,054,956,032 Bytes)
    Free Space :     1.3 TB (1,393,188,286,464 Bytes)
    Used :     565.2 GB (606,866,669,568 Bytes)
    Number of Files :     851,286
    Number of Folders :     186,288
    Owners Enabled :     No
    Can Turn Owners Off :     Yes
    Can Be Formatted :     Yes
    Bootable :     Yes
    Supports Journaling :     Yes
    Journaled :     No
    Disk Number :     1
    Partition Number :     2
I am unable to boot in both firewire 400/800 and USB. What is confusing is that if another drive with a partition format for windows is installed the drive is recognized without a problem and mounts. I can see the HDD in Disk Utility but only the Disk itself is selectable but the partition is greyed out. The drive also cannot be checked or repaired in Disk Utility when connected with the firewire enclosure. I have tried this on two seperate apple computers, one even being an older PPC. Another thing that confuses me is that if I attached the HD to the computer using only a SATA/USB adapter cable, I can boot off the drive just fine. And when connected to a PPC the drive mounts seemlessly. I went into the shop where I purchased my enclosure and after some testing they said that it was because of the GPT Protection which is just GUI Partition Table. They said this is a somewhat common problem with Firewire enclosures and even LaCie reported this problem. Has anyone ever heard of this? Is there a problem between GUID and Firewire interfaces? If Intel Macs can only use GUID partitioning how can I get around this problem? I've looked around and it seems it's possible to install SL onto an APM drive by cloning from an Intel system, but why won't it just work the way it's supposed to? Any insights would be helpful....
Thanks in advance!

Journaled isn't a requirement for SL to boot. All I can suggest for the OP is to erase and repartition the HD; then, try again.

Boot from external Firewire Drive-cannot repair or optimize internal drive.

Hi all
Connected my new 300 GB Seagate External Firewire Hard Drive today.
Installed Tiger from DVD. Updated to 10.4.3.
Installed Tech Tool Pro 4. Updated to 4.1.1.
Booted from External Firewire Drive.
Disk Utility cannot Verify or Repair internal drive. Does not say or do anything.
Tech Tool Pro cannot repair volume or optimize. Says, "Cannot Unmount Volume."
Is there a fix for this?
Thank you for the help!
Jeff
eMac 800 nVidia. Mac OS X (10.4.3) 160 GB Internal HD. Pioneer Superdrive. 1 GB RAM.

Hi
I did name the new external completely different from the internal.
After booting from the external Firewire Hard Drive, I tried running Disk Utility and Tech Tool Pro from both drives. No matter which drive I run the Utilities from the same things happen every time...
Nothing happens when trying to use Disk Utility to Verify Volume on internal eMac Drive.
Tech Tool Pro says, "Cannot unmount volume" when trying to check Volume or Optimize internal drive.

Tiger won't boot from external firewire

Installed 10.4.3 DVD on clean external firewire (Extended/Journaled). Before I installed Tiger, I ran updates, and repaired permissions. Everything looked good to me.
I'm keeping Panther on main system drive for now - so from System Preferences>Startup Disk>the external tiger drive appears and I select it. Then I select restart and the promt confirms that the computer will restart with 10.4.3. Looks good so far.
After restart, I'm looking at the desktop, guess what? It's 10.3.9, not 10.4.3. How could that be?
Also, when I restart and hold down the Option key for Startup Manager options - the firewire drive does not appear as an option.
So Tiger appears in System Preferences>Startup Disc as an option, but the option doesn't actually work, and that drive does not appear at all in (Option key) startup manager.
I'm Indexing the firewire drive now (OMG is that slow or what!), but I'm not expecting this to make any difference. I'm stumped. What am I overlooking? Please advise.
Muchas Gracias

R MacCool,
"What if I manually drag and drop the 4 folders (from the Tiger DVD) onto a second internal SATA drive without partitioning the drive first? Will I be able to boot off an internal SATA drive like that? When I installed Tiger on the external firewire I see that 4 folders are there - I could drag them from that drive onto the second internal drive. Does that work?"
No, this does not work. MacOS X consists of more then 20,000 invisible files, most of them somehow connected and referencing each other.
MacOS X DOES boot from external firewire drives, both hard disks and DVD drives.
Why don't you just upgrade your current 10.3.9 to Tiger using this procedure: 10.4 Tiger Upgrade: Decision tree+Checklist?
"Why does Tiger seem to install correctly, then System Pref>Startup Disc recognizes it, but then after selecting 10.4.3 it restarts into 10.3.9?"
I am not a technician, but it could be that the firmware is the primary source for connectivity. After MacOS X has booted the internal firewire drivers might take over and "overrule" the firmware (this is why you can see it in the startup disk preference pane) but at boot-time it exclusively depends on the firmware. This theory might be completely wrong though.

Should I be able to boot from external firewire disk?

Yesterday, to prepare for upgrading to Leopard, I copied across my hard drive contents onto an external Firewire drive, by using drag & drop, folder by folder.
I was hoping that this would let me (after a reboot) select the external drive as my Startup Disk in System Prefs, or allow me to choose it if I rebooted holding down the alt key. However the external drive doesn't show up in either case.
Is there something else I need to do to allow booting via external Firewire? Is that even possible on my PB 1.5GHz (OSX 10.3.9)? Thanks.

Close, but no cigar! Copying by drag n drop misses invisible files necessary for a boot volume. The way to do this is to use one of the cloning programs like SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner to copy everything needed to make the FW drive bootable. You can even specify to NOT copy all your files if you wish.
I go to Versiontracker.com to get these programs.

MBP slow to boot and WILL NOT boot from external drive

I have two problems. First my friends MacBook Pro which is less than a month old is taking long to load. So I did a clean install without installing anything other than what came. Still slow to boot. Sometimes I see a light blue screen for a while before getting into the desktop. She complains of the beachball far too often. She says my MacBook is faster than her Pro, which is not right.
So I came down with my external LaCie drive, which I cloned from my iMac 24". I wasn't able to boot from the external (firewire) drive using her MacBook Pro. I thought my LaCie drive was bad or soemthing, but when I got home, I hooked it up to my MacBook and booted from the external drive just fine. I use SuperDuper to make a bootable clone.
So as it stands now, her computer is slow to boot into the OS, and it won't let me boot from my external drive. Does anyone have any idea what this could be? I did a clean install, used cocktail, etc. If it persists, I'll tell her to take it in.
Thanks,
Bryan

Robert,
I have no idea what you mean by Apple is not responsive to the issue. If you want help, please start a new topic thread so someone can help you identify the problem without the distraction of other people's problems around yours. Blaming people does not solve problems.
This is the link to post a new topic on this board:
http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1149&start=0
This is a user to user board. If you need help from Apple, call AppleCare directly here:
http://www.apple.com/contact/phone_contacts.html

Core i7 mbp will not boot from external disk

One upon a time, I tried to boot my new:
Model Name:    MacBook Pro
Model Identifier:    MacBookPro8,1
Processor Name:    Intel Core i7
Processor Speed:    2.7 GHz
Number of Processors:    1
Total Number of Cores:    2
L2 Cache (per Core):    256 KB
L3 Cache:    4 MB
Memory:    4 GB
Boot ROM Version:    MBP81.0047.B0E
from a bootable Carbon Copy Cloner backup on my external FW800 drive. (This, after I used Migration assistant to move the user over from My MacBookPro 5,1 core 2 duo machine.)
It didn't like it, booting from the CCC clone, that is. There were problems with the boot of the new machine from that external disk and then problems with the boot from the internal disk. I repaired disk permisssions and all seemed to be well booting from the internal disk for several months until I tried to boot from my SL 10.6 2Z691-6431-A CPU Drop-in DVD upgrade included with the initial purchase. That didn't work. I got the grey "restart your computer by holding down the power button" screen with a bunch of words and numbers in the background. This also happened with the grey intsall disks that shipped with the machine with 10.5.7 on them.
Following this, the turning gear times are erratic, varying from 11 to 40 turns on boot up with an odd flicker happening for a fraction of a second during the turning gear screen. From time to time I'll get some beach balling while the login is taking place and all of the icons are loading in. After that, the machine functions fairly normally.
I know there's a problem though and I'm looking to resolve it with any advice the community can offer.
I have used DiskWarrior in the past but not for this machine which has not been used with this machine since it's incompatible. I also have a full timecapsule backup. I also have a partition on an external drive with OS 10.6 on it. Haven't tried to boot from it because I'm scared it'll mess things up worse.

I'm trying to boot my core i7 from any external disk without success getting only the grey restart screen. The machine will neither boot from the 10.6 upgrade disk, nor the external firewire disk.
I'm not sure, but it seems that you're suggesting that I rebuild the OS as though it were a brand new machine without any of my s/w or data, and I cannot conceive of such a monumental task. If you mean that I should reinstall the OS, that would be fine, but I can't boot from a DVD, which is what prompted this query to begin with.
I would like to resolve the external disk boot failure.

Booting from external Firewire drive--possible?

If I add a USB/Firewire card to my Beige G3 minitower (300MHz), can I then boot from an external Firewire hard drive on which I have installed Panther? A comment by Tina Garfield in another thread seems to suggest this is indeed possible. (I didn't want to "threadjack" that discussion, so I created this new one. I hope Tina sees it and can help me.)
Tina wrote the following:
Having Firewire allows you to have external drives,
which you will be able to boot from, and make
backups and maintenance especially easy.
I was under the impression that the Beige G3 can't see iadd-on Firewire/USB cards until the machine has booted from the internal hard drive. I really hope I am wrong! If it is indeed possible to have the machine recognize the external drive at startup, and there is something I need to do to enable this, please let me know.
Thanks!
GeeKay

Hi GeeKay,
Ditto to everything Grant posted, with an extra reminder to be sure to download XPostFacto 3.1 and not version 4. I believe on the XPF page ( http://eshop.macsales.com/OSXCenter/XPostFacto/Framework.cfm?page=XPostFacto3.ht ml ), the download for 3.1 is a little bit down the page.
If/when you buy an external FW drive be sure it has an Oxford chipset. If the description does not include mention of the the Oxford chipset, I would strongly recommend finding another external drive that does specify this. Our Beiges are very particular about what they will accept for external booting, and the Oxford chipset is a critical component.
Also, I've found, since I do partition my external firewire drives, that I can boot only from the first partition of the external drive, similar to the behavior of our internal drives. In addition, with one of my Beiges, my "helper" disk that I specify to XPostFacto to allow me to boot externally must be the first partition of my internal drive.
I don't believe that you can actually INSTALL to an external drive. I simply cloned my internal drive's system over to the FW drive. This can be done with software such as the free Silverkeeper ( http://www.lacie.com/silverkeeper/ ) or with shareware SuperDuper ( http://www.shirt-pocket.com/ ) which are both great for all backups. I happen to prefer SuperDuper because of its redundancy -- it explains EVERY step before you take it and then, even after you tell it to go ahead, it asks you again to be sure That's what you want to do.
Once set up, however, it is extremely cool, and helpful, to be able to boot externally. If your external drive is dual USB/FW, you will only be able to boot when connected via Firewire. None of the Beiges are USB-bootable.
Hope this helps, and keep us posted,
Tina

Problems booting from external firewire drive

Here's a weird one...
I'm trying to help a buddy with a 3rd gen MBP and a new WD 'My Studio' firewire external drive.
He can mount and use the drive but is unable to boot from it. When starting up his machine with option, the drive doesn't show up as selection. The really odd part is the drive does work if plugged in with the USB cable!
The drive in question DOES work as expected on my 5th gen MBP with firewire. Further, I can stert my MBP in target disc mode and it will function as expected as a bootable external drive for his machine. The system in question was cloned with Carbon Copy Cloner. And again, it boots from my MBP.
I've tried different sets of cables (even though everything works on my system). I actually had him send the drive back for warranty replacement but of course the new one behaves the same way.
What could be the cause of apparently certain firewire drives not being bootable (but otherwise working) on a 3rd gen MBP? The intended workflow is to be studio/audio work so using the USB connection for a workaround would not be an option.
Any clues? Windows is not even installed on any of these machines!

baltwo wrote:
FWIW, many WD HDs won't boot Macs and booting Macs isn't supported. Details at their site. That's the main reason I never recommend their crappy HDs.
Actually I'm very familiar with that list- spent a lot of time looking at this past week!
Ironically, the majority of that page is a list of drives which they claim WILL boot Macs. In fact, the list is entitled "List of Mac-bootable WD external drives..."
And yep, mine is on there...on the list that reads "The following external hard drives should be bootable on Intel-based Mac computers systems through FireWire (1394a/b)" is "MyBook Studio" as well as my drive model number.
But that's all beside the point. Like you, I couldn't recommend their drives at this point. At least make sure if you buy one that the vendor has a good return policy.
Dave

Mac Mini Will not boot from external drive or install disk

Hi,
I just bought a new 2.0 ghz mac mini 1 gb ram. 120gb hdd.
I have a separate external HDD attached and wanted to boot from this. It works with my MBP and IMAC.
When i plug it into the Mac Mini and start up with Option key. It recognizes it.
I then click on it. It automatically reboots.... then grey screen comes on. It goes black after about 10 seconds. then boots into original operating system.
I also tried to use the MAC install Disk, thinking it might be a corruption in the shipped software. It does the same thing.
I have MAC Install DVD on an external drive too. Same issue.
I partitioned the HDD and installed a copy of the Mac install disk onto that with disk utility... Same thing grey screen, then black then back to original operating system.
Not sure what is going on?
thanks
Chris

Hi,
Thanks.
It is running 10.5.8.
I am trying to boot up an external drive with 10.5.8 on it. It works on my Macbook Pro which is running 10.5.8, runs on my IMAC running SL. But doesnt work on the mac mini?
It had been running SL, however there are a number of programs I have like Windows Live Sync which are not yet compatable with SL so i downgraded to 10.5.6 which came with the Mac Mini then loaded all updates.
It seems to just go into an auto reboot as soon as i click on it.
i thought it might be the firmware? Is it possible to downgrade them and then re-install?
I have reset the PRAM.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks

MBP 2011 / 10.6.7: Not booting from external devices

Hi everybody,
I just bought a brand new MBP 2.3 GHz i7 QC, 8 GB RAM, 500 GB HDD/7.200. After updating to 10.6.7, installing my applications and restoring my libraries and documents, I made a complete backup of Macintosh HD on an external USB HDD using Carbon Copy Cloner.
Unfortunately, the generated clone won't boot, although the parameters of the external HDD are correct (GUID etc.). The boot process hangs at the white Apple logo display and won't continue. Additionally, I tried to start the system from TechTool Pro's and Drive Genius' original boot DVDs - they won't work either. Same for TechTool Pro's eDisk feature.
At last, ProSoft (maker of Drive Genius) support said that some kind of Apple development kit needs to be updated before they can provide a bootable DVD for 10.6.7. Nevertheless, why is the external HDD not working? It has been formatted using 10.6.7, so it should be recognized as a proper external boot device.
Any ideas? Any help is appreciated.
Message was edited by: SteffenKaiser

I can surely boot from Apple's OS X installation DVD. No problem. Hardware Test runs through smoothly. Eventually, I made the Carbon Copy Cloner image on the external HDD boot. That's sufficient for now, although I wonder why the DVDs (made with 10.6.4) won't work.

Boot from external firewire HD with ibook G4

I have installed a copy of my tiger OS on a passport studio portable HD. I then upgraded it to leopard using my installer disk. I am able to boot my desktop imac with it but I cannot do the same for my ibook which is what I want it for. I used the "universal method" of installing to the drive. It is partitioned using APM as instructed. The drive shows up on my desktop and the software is there but I cannot boot from it using system preferences, holding the option key or even restarting from the installer disk. I am open to any suggestions at this point.

The Passport Studio?
I'm not familiar with that devices specifications;
but if it sports USB 2.0 and not FireWire400,
and does not have the equivalent of an Oxford
chipset, it won't support booting PPC Macs.
Or it may, but sometimes a brand of hard disk
within some enclosures don't boot Mac well.
Anyway, you could see if the OS X Installer's
version of Disk Utility can repair the disk drive
or see if there are any error reports from there.
Apple Partition Map is the forma; HFS+ should
work, if it isn't the same and there is no option.
But Intel Macs use a different format scheme.
{Is the installer disc a suitable one for the
computer you have, or is it from a different
Mac model and version? Is it older than
the computer, or is it the as-shipped disc?
It would have to be a machine specific or
retail disc newer than the as-shipped OS.}
Newer Macs with Intel processor can boot from
a properly formatted USB 2.0 externally powered
hard disk drive and enclosure. Or in some cases
a USB powered device... Or, a reduced version
of OS X on a specially-prepared USB Flash drive.
Was the system on an external FW HD put
there via a clone utility, as taken from a full
normal installed system, from a computer?
Or was the external FW HD the recipient
of a full new installation to the attached drive
from the host computer, as an optional place
to install the OSX version you have?
There are some rules, of those a few can be
found in the home page, Carbon Copy Cloner.
The basics for cloning vary with the software
utilities used and it is possible to make a bad
clone which cannot boot a computer in FW.
Or one so corrupted, that an hour's wait and
time spent fixing bad permissions is needed.
In the meantime, I am set to go a few hundred
miles and won't be taking a computer; no net
and too cold of weather.
Hopefully someone will see this thread and
add some thoughts on the topic. Sorry I was
not of more help.
Good luck & happy computing!
edited.

Booting from external Firewire drive.

Hello there.
I got a brand new 17" 2g intel iMac and I'm very happy with it.
However I missed my 2 internal drives so I bought another firewire drive to make backups, having an emergency system, etc.
But apparently I can't install a system with this external drive (nor in the second ext. drive I got).
Is this a common issue? Do I have to do something?
(I'm using the Installer CD I got with the iMac).

It is important to note that a traditional APM partition can, in fact, boot an Intel Mac - I have done it on numerous occasions. Specifically,
- A GUID partition is required to install (new) an Intel version of 10.4.x. If the partition is APM, the installer will not recognize it as bootable and will not allow for installation. In this case, the GUID format is required.
- an APM partition can be used to boot the Intel as long as it is cloned.
I've used (and continue to use) Mike Bombich's Carbon Copy Cloner. Despite being a PPC app, it works as expected. I tested this when I first received my Intel iMac since I would inevitably need to use one drive (with multiple partitions of course) to boot a mixture of PPC and Intel Macs at work. As such, I have one external Firewire drive with 3 APM partitions - 1 with 10.3.9 (PPC) for labs that still run Panther, 1 partition with 10.4.x for labs that have upgraded and 1 partition with 10.4.x Intel for the 1 lab where the new Macs are slowly being integrated.

IMac 2.8Ghz + booting from external FireWire Drive

I was wondering if anyone has 'booted' from an external FireWire drive using the FireWire 400 port?
After going through the issue of reformatting my external drive with the GU-ID partitioning scheme, I found that the drive would mount on the FW400 port but wouldn't boot. In the end I used the FW800 port and the drive booted up first time. On my old PowerBook I could boot from both FW400 & FW800, does anyone know why FW400 doesn't work or is it my iMac?

If it mounts then you can install OSX or clone OSX and then boot from it. From what you are saying a bootable partition will boot on 400 just not on 800, which is quite odd, I concur.
Note that they are notorious for needing the right power supply and they all look identical - I had problems of recent with a triple extreme 1 TB on FW 800, and took it to LaCie (a mile from where I work) - they told me I was using the wrong power supply and gave me the right one free. When I got home I did have the right one in a pile with others. 4.2 A vs. 2.2 A and it worked great. And I have a spare free power supply.
I don't think drivers even enter into it at all with firewire, e.g. drive specific drivers.

Stupid question: force booting from external FireWire drive

My PowerBook is refusing to boot from it's hard drive (flashing ?/folder), which I'll be attempting to repair using DiskWarrior, etc.
But it's also not finding and booting from the OS X installed on my external FireWire drive (which it could do under normal circumstances). How do I force it to do that given that I'm unable to set the Start Up Volume in the normal manner?
PowerBook G4 17" 1.5GHz 512MB 80GB Mac OS X (10.3.6)

Dale,
Thanks for your response. I've been through the usual stuff as in your reference and I eventually got it to boot off the external HD by just leaving it long enough - it took maybe 10-15 minutes. I'm booted from it now. I hadn't thought of using the Startup Manager, but will try to remember next time.
As for the internal HD, it's looking like it's dead - neither Disk Warrior nor Data Rescue II seem to be able to see it. I tried Disk Utility from the external HD, but it doesn't see it and nor does the Profiler. Maybe it's just a loose connection internally. There is a noise coming from the PB from about just under the division between the left hand rest and the speaker. It sort of sounds like a disk continually being read or written - ie. a sort of very rapid clicking, but I don't think it's the HD. And I don't think it's the fan. Anyone with any ideas before I call AppleCare?
I did have a very similar problem a few weeks ago (http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=1465680#1465680), but Disk Warrior fixed it apparently with next to no problems. I was going to wipe the drive at the weekend & reinstall, but didn't get round to it in the end ... Fortunately I had a backup this time and was able to restore my user simply by copying it.

New MacPro not booting from external firewire

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